


Expensive

by LordBlumiere



Category: Hazumi and the Pregnation
Genre: Banned Together Bingo 2020, Gen, Objectification, Teen Pregnancy, no betas we die like men, surprisingly no actual fucking is involved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:21:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24955222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LordBlumiere/pseuds/LordBlumiere
Summary: The question and its answer linger in your mind.
Kudos: 8
Collections: Banned Together Bingo 2020





	Expensive

You're nine years old, and you realize you don't know anyone who has a sibling.

"Children are expensive," your mom tells you, swaying from side to side as she stirs the miso soup. "I know you want a baby brother or sister, but you can make do with your friends, can't you, Hazumi?"

You agree with her, but mostly to ensure that you can change the subject. Children are expensive - that's something you never heard before, not from anyone in school, nor anyone on the playgrounds or in the supermarkets or the convenience stores. If that's the reason you don't have a sibling, you think to yourself as you lay in bed, does that mean your mom _bought_ you? The mirror glints uncomfortably bright on the other side of the room, reflecting pink hair, so different from the brown of your mother's. You have to throw a blanket over it to sleep that night.

You're thirteen years old, and the sex education class is the talk of the school. Of course it is; at thirteen, you already know about puberty, and every other boy makes a dick joke the second he gets a chance. You don't think too hard about it until the physical tests come up. Why do they need to physically test you in a class like this?

The letter in the mail, the hushed whispers between your parents, and the separation into another class... those speak louder than anything else could have. You sit in an uncomfortable seat and learn about menstruation, about your job as a childbearer, about pregnancy, about the world fertility crisis. Now, the worry you once had that you'd never have a sibling feels so quaint. The presenter showers you and everyone else in the room with condoms. You don't bother to take any of them with you.

You're sixteen years old. English class exhausts you and history isn't much better. When you look in the mirror at home, drawing up the blanket, your appearance startles you every time. Were you in the prime of your life when you were just thirteen, innocent about what was coming your way? When your biggest worries were whether or not the cutest boy in school would kiss you? You can hardly look at your figure, but everyone else eyes you like a piece of meat, and you desperately want to throw yourself into something, _anything_ else but what everyone tells you your destiny is.

When you are sixteen, Yuki waddles into class for the first time, and her transfer is made clear to be temporary. Still, you think, you dare even hope, that she has freed herself. But you know better, or at least think you do. Every time her hand crests her slowly growing stomach in class, you wonder what your own would look like doing the same. Suddenly, strangely, the mirror doesn't seem like such a monster anymore.

Yuki leaves suddenly the week before summer holidays. You know why; everyone knows why. The teachers say nothing, but they don't need to. Uncomfortable feelings rise inside of you, and you wish you'd talked to her just once before she left. Did she even have any friends? _Anyone_ who would care, now, that she was gone, that she would soon be in the hospital with a child she couldn't even call her own?

That night, you lay in bed, and you weep for the unknown.

The day you turn eighteen, you already have your train ticket. You clutch it close as you head to the station, your other hand holding your sweater. A cold, rainy summer seems apropos for your situation. You never forgot Yuki, not that you ever thought you could. On the train, the men all eye you again like a piece of meat, but you've learned to lift your head high, to stop looking at them back, to turn your mind to other things. Still - you know now that, maybe, you are the meat they make you out to be.

Your new apartment is nothing special - all you could really bring was your phone, your cash, and your futon. You're glad for the rain now; air conditioning is expensive, and the idea of trying to pay for that with your body... The girls at the Institute seem far more interested in that than you. You wish you could have been normal, could have had a husband, could have bought a baby.

But as you begin to drift off, the day's work at the cafe draining you, hand on your stomach, you think the words your mother said to you:

"Children are expensive."


End file.
